Mind Control

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Gita series – part 29. Bhagavad Gita Chapter II - Verses–61-63:

Krishna continues to address Arjuna. “One who represses all his senses and fixes his consciousness on me and surrenders unto me, his senses are under his control and his intellect becomes steadfast. Dwelling on sense objects causes attachment to them. Attachment leads to craving, craving leads to anger, anger leads to delusion, delusion leads to loss of memory, loss of memory leads to loss of intelligence, loss of intelligence leads to disintegration” (verses 61 to 63). Repressing senses and fixing consciousness in the higher planes are two different issues, the former leading to the latter. Repressing or controlling the senses is associated with the mind. When our mind is not under our control, it always looks up to the sensory organs to keep itself busy. But if the mind is trained to function under our control, the situation differs. Mind can be controlled only by higher level of knowledge called intellect and higher level of consciousness. When the mind is well trained and brought under our control, it is able to distinguish the difference between the impermanent happiness and permanent joy.

The impermanent nature of happiness is associated with the body and the permanent joy known as bliss in advanced stages is derived by the refinement of mind, intellect, consciousness and ego called anthakkaranam or the internal tools. When the mind gets rid of the afflictions of senses, it becomes loyal to its master called consciousness. This is what is termed as keeping the mind under our control. You cannot approach the mind through any other sources, except consciousness. When consciousness is able to penetrate and transgress the lower levels of activities that are associated with senses, it gets associated with higher level of wisdom called intellect. Intellect does not understand the lower level of intelligence that stands attached to the senses, as it guides the mind only on issues that are not associated with senses. This is what Krishna means by saying ‘his intellect becomes steadfast’. This is a stage where the mind totally gets dissolved into the intellect. If the intellect alone prevails, sense organs have no role to play as the intellect cannot be influenced by the tentacles of sense organs. What happens if one is not able to control his senses and not able to make his intellect steadfast? Krishna addresses this issue. There are serious implications; one affliction leading to another and at the end, his mind becomes infested with afflictions and adversities. If one continues to dwell on the influence of senses, the end result is annihilation. For annihilation, there has to be a beginning somewhere and the beginning is made by the mind by associating with sensory objects.

Let us take a sweet as an example. You derive happiness if you consume a particular sweet daily. Over a period of time, your mind develops attachment to that sweet. If the sweet is not available on a particular day, your mind craves for it. You go to all the stores to find out the availability of that sweet. Unfortunately it is not available anywhere. You get wild and your mind goes out of your control. You develop hallucination about the sweet, as you are so attached to it. Attraction is the cause for this attachment. Hallucination leads to imbalance of memory. Imbalanced state of mind leads to strange acts that lead to loss of self esteem. When you are not in a normal state of mind, your consciousness level is either negative or very low. In the absence of good consciousness level, intellect, the prime requirement for spiritual life cannot be developed. Your path to annihilation starts from anger as anger distorts the mind joining hands with your ego and becomes too powerful for repair at a later date. When such a situation happens in an individual, he is called insane. If the same situation happens to a group of people (society, nation etc), it is the indicative factor for the annihilation of the society or nation. Disintegration of a society or nation begins from an individual. What we are distained to get in this birth, surely we will get at any cost. Without understanding this principle and developing desires for those objects beyond our normal reach, leads to total destruction.